Arundhati Devi has expressed her resentment over the cancellation of her ticket by the BJD for the Deogarh Assembly constituency through a social media post.

“Sita Mata had rightly said that there is no respect for women in this world,” she posted with a crying photo of the iconic figure from Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana.

The snatching of the ticket after she had begun campaigning in the Assembly segment has come as a humiliation for the royalty while also raises questions on the BJD’s ‘respect for mother’ slogan.

Arundhati, who had earned a nomination for the seat a day after switching sides from the BJP to the BJD, was replaced with Romancha Ranjan Biswal on Thursday in what appeared to be a change in the BJD’s strategy for the Sambalpur Lok Sabha big battle where party organisational secretary Pranab Prakash Das is contesting against Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan of the BJP.

The Deogarh Assembly seat is part of the Sambalpur Parliamentary constituency. 

Arundhati is the wife of erstwhile Deogarh king and BJP’s Sambalpur MP Nitesh Ganga Dev. Besides local resistance, she was facing problems at home with her husband openly declaring that he was ready to campaign for the BJP candidate in Deogarh

Her nomination had also brought infighting in the regional party to the fore which made it difficult for Pranab to penetrate Deogarh, a stronghold of Dharmendra and BJP MLA candidate Subash Chandra Panigrahi.

The BJD brought back Biswal, who was BJD’s candidate in 2019 as well but had lost to BJP’s Subash Panigrahi by a margin of 7,106 votes.